Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

I was never a speedy reader, not even in Hebrew. I like to mull over the nice expressions I come across, ponder their meaning, try and imagine the hero and what I would do in his place–and even the writer and what I would have written had I been him. For many years, in planes, trains, hotels, and hideaway apartments, I’d been reading only in English. And yet, wading through a book still took me an inordinate amount of time and was a huge effort.

After my divorce from Orit, and after I had made my way through the ‘big bores’, I chose to read at random great tomes such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead which I had previously not dared to take on. Now I considered plunging into Russian literature and perhaps learning something more about the country in which I was due to spend the next few years.

Along Nevsky Prospekt I found a couple of bookshops that sold English translations of Russian literature. I armed myself with classics which I hadn’t yet read such as Dostoyevsky’s Demons as well as translations of young writers whose names I hadn’t heard of till then. I would start reading at home after getting back from the office, then go to the restaurant and read at my regular table until Mrs Vashkirova served my food. I ate at a leisurely pace, sometimes turning over a page or two as I did so. Back at the apartment I continued until I felt tired enough to fall asleep. I enjoyed this routine little more than I had in Tel Aviv.

Some of those who came to the restaurant were regulars, perhaps residents of my building or of the neighbourhood that stretched beyond the end of my own street where simple, cheap, cube-shaped blocks had been built during the Khrushchev era with smaller apartments, smaller rooms, and lower ceilings, than in my Stalinist building. The locals who were drawn to the restaurant were ordinary middle-aged people. Some came alone, others with their partners. All of them clearly preferred the cheap dishes prepared by Vashkirova to having to cook in the tiny kitchenettes of their apartments.

Sometime after I, too, became a regular, I began to notice one of the diners–a woman who always sat by the window reading and making do, more often than not, with a bowl of soup or even just a cup of tea. Despite the dim light in the restaurant, I couldn’t help noticing the loveliness of her features silhouetted against the background of the window illuminated by the street lighting. Even from the distance of a number of tables I could see the beauty of the straight nose, the well-defined jaw line, and the high cheek bones. This was a quiet beauty, not drawing attention to itself but aware of its fine attributes. It was recognizable even from the upright way in which the woman sat, from the elegance with which she crossed her legs–despite the thick fur boots she wore–and from the pleasant but distant smile she directed at Vashkirova when the lady of the house offered to serve her. She looked as if she was my age, coming up for forty.

When she glanced up from her book, as if thinking about what she had read, the street lamps twinkled in her eyes–eyes that looked oval, Asiatic. Her neck was always wrapped in a soft scarf, a fur hat always on her head. This gave her a transient appearance. Yet she continued to sit, slowly sipping the soup and reading, without looking at those coming into the restaurant or those in the street who walked past her window.

About a week after I first noticed her, two men, who looked as if they didn’t belong to this part of town, caught my attention. They seemed too animated and jovial to be eating at such a humble restaurant. The pair, sitting with their backs to me, were a few years younger than me, they were well dressed and I saw that other diners were also glancing at them with interest and then looking away.

When they’d eaten and were waiting for their tea, one of them turned to the woman, sitting at the next table. I didn’t understand all he said or all of her answers, but I saw the blush in her cheeks and, from the rapid way she turned her face away from him and back to her book, I guessed that the young man had made some kind of advance and was turned down. His friend tapped his back fondly and the two laughed. She continued with her reading.

When they finished drinking and had paid, the two men got up to leave, at which point I could see their handsome Slavic faces. The one who’d approached her was powerfully built and particularly good-looking. Apparently having no intention of giving up, he went to the woman’s table and exchanged a few words with her. She looked directly at him and answered dryly, words that were meant to put an end to his overtures. He took out a visiting card, wrote a number on it and offered it to her. When she didn’t reach out for the card he placed it on the table and left with his friend, giggling in embarrassment. I heard the powerful roar of an engine being turned on, and through the window watched a Mercedes jeep drive away at speed.

Moving slowly, the woman picked up the card and without looking at it, or pausing in her reading, she delicately tore it in two and dumped it in the ashtray. She continued to read, obviously aware of the looks she was getting from the other diners. So she too doesn’t like sharply-dressed, rich youngsters, I noted to myself in appreciation as I also went back to my book.

I was apparently so preoccupied with Varvara Petrovna and Stepan Trofimovich that I paid no attention to the woman making her way out of the restaurant.

THE SMALL RESTAURANT was unusually full. My regular table was taken, as were the two tables near the windows. I was a bit surprised that in a neighbourhood restaurant such as this there were no families with children, only couples and a group of middle-aged people apparently celebrating a birthday. I sat at one of the tables in the middle, the only one that was free. Shortly afterwards the woman came in. She surveyed the scene, clearly embarrassed, and lingered at the entrance.

I would have been happy to ask her to join me but she didn’t look in my direction and I didn’t know how to go about inviting her without appearing too forward.

The good-hearted Mrs Vashkirova leapt to the rescue–mine and hers. Without consulting me at all, she attracted the woman’s attention and signalled her to sit at my table.

The woman’s manners were a little bit more refined than those of the large-bosomed cook. She looked bashfully at me and at Vashkirova and asked if it was OK with the ‘gospodin’, the gentleman, meaning me. Of course it’s OK, Vashkirova told her, pointing first at the chair facing me, then at the woman and then, without pausing for my response, drew the seat away from the table in readiness for the woman to sit down. I nodded, somewhat belatedly, and blurted a clumsy ‘Da, da’.

Hesitantly, the woman approached and asked if it was OK.

It’s OK, I answered.

She thanked me with a pleasant though somewhat restrained smile.

The table had been laid for four and although Vashkirova offered my guest the seat opposite mine, the woman placed her bag and coat there, gently pulled away the second chair, and sat down to my right.

American? She asked, keeping the enquiry to a minimum.

Canadian, I answered, Paul, and offered my hand.

She shook it quickly, smiled, and took her book out of her bag.

I very much didn’t want our short acquaintanceship to end with this brief exchange. Paul Gupta, I said after a brief silence, and felt ridiculous, like a poor imitation of James Bond and the way he invariably introduces himself.

When she looked at me with her beautiful eyes and said, as simple courtesy required, Anna Petrovna, the surprise in her expression highlighted for me how clumsy I’d been. Bond’s image had always seemed to me exaggerated. I couldn’t, and had never wanted to, resemble him.